Spammer – Paul's Tech Talk

Walmart Text Spam and How to fight it!

PaulApril 30, 2012

Interesting text messages!

I’ve had a long weekend doing some stuff and I happen to get two different text from two different numbers, with the same text. Now you if you’ve been an avid reader of this blog, you know I REALLY HATE SPAM! I even talked about blog referrer spam and how it just looks bad on companies.

Text Numbers So far:

310-435-9136

214-600-2674

You have been selected for a $1,000 Walmart GiftCard, Enter code “FREE” at http://www.walmart.com.xxx.biz/wm/ to claim your prize: 161 left!

Why spammers are using text messages now?

Most of the time, the reason spammers are going to text spamming now is that it is far easier to spam you on your text message then to use email. Hey let’s face it who is going to report the spam and who do you report it them too? These are the reasons why spammers are going to go this route, it is much harder to block or report these spam messages and they know it. So I figured if they are going to send messages my way, I’d send messages to the right provider and thus I went back to my old post about reporting text message spam.

I’m looking for Android Apps that do this!

I’ve been searching around for an app that does this, but most of them just block it and don’t really report it! I’d really want to make it hard for the spammers to want to send text messages. Right now the cost of sending text spam is low but if it starts to make it less profitable they will go somewhere else to spam.

Some of the Apps that I will try are:

Handcent SMS — Handcent SMS is a powerful free sms/mms tools for your android phone. The most popular messaging app on the Android Market, Handcent SMS is a powerful, customizable, and free SMS/MMS app that fully unleashes the messaging potential of Android devices.
Mr. Number Text, Call & Block — Text and call the people you love. Block everyone else. Mr. Number is a messenger, dialer, and contact manager with built-in call and text blocking (free application) and automatic reverse lookup for numbers you don’t know (Caller ID).
Phone Spam Blocker — NUMBERCOP blocks spam calls and text from 50.000 telemarketers & scam artists Getting SPAM CALLS or TEXT SMS SPAM ? NUMBERCOP is the easiest way to block them. NUMBERCOP knows 50.000 spamming phone numbers: Phone scams, phishing calls and annoying telemarketers. NUMBERCOP blocks spam calls and text from 50.000 telemarketers & scam artistsGetting SPAM CALLS or TEXT SMS SPAM ? NUMBERCOP is the easiest way to block them. NUMBERCOP knows 50.000 spamming phone numbers: Phone scams, phishing calls and annoying telemarketers.

As you can tell some of these that I’ve found do check caller ID but I am hoping that it will be easier to find the carrier that is being used to spam but at least these do have some ways to block text spam SMS. My only hope is that someone app developer will come up with a way to report text spam messages to the right company and thus making it extremely hard to send text messages and the cost would out way spamming people.

Paul Sylvester

Twitter Spammers are getting more smarter

PaulFebruary 8, 2009

I got an interesting email about someone following me. I went to go check out there profile and Guess what I see:

As you cann se this account only had one post but people seem to be following back due to the picture and the bio. I checked the account about 30 mins later and here I will show you:

[ad#ad2-right]It seems that if people see it has a picture and a bio that doesn’t sound like it is is advertising anything, they will simply follow them back. That really isn’t a good idea. Sooner or later they will start sending out spam to people who are following just because they haven’t been caught. I also checked out the Web site they have new there bio and it leads to http://www.squidoo.com/twittertipstricks. I hope the website knows their link is being used by a spammer. Although this could be a 2 for one deal for having there link also being used for spammer so they can get traffic to there site. I would be worried my ISP doesn’t cut my website due to THE TOS. Although I serious doubt it would happen I do know it could happen. So users are being fooled by spammers, and people aren’t looking hard enough into the account. Users should be warned they shouldn’t just follow back if it looks like it is a person. I know this is a robot and expect it soon to start sending out spam to all those people who are following. I just thought I’d share what I found out. If you clicked on the tinyurl.com it sends you to Partnerwithpaul.com website which talks about making money like all other spam. Just be careful you don’t end up having regrets on following people who are bots.

A fan wants to Release Windows 7 Now : My Security Concerns

PaulJanuary 29, 2009

After reading about this from PcWorld, I’ve went to check this site out. I went to his twitter accoun(Kelly Poe) to find out the site he put up and I am quite impressed. Here are few things that I am concerned about starting with the website.

[ad#ad2-right]I love the idea and all but I am quite concerned with the privacy of my email account. I don’t know if you have to submit your email account but I would caution people not enter one until the site says what it will do with your email address.

Now that being said that’s the only thing I can think of when it comes to security for your email address, you don’t want to someone to give out your email address to spammers. That would just make it even worse for your email account. You could however use a 10 min Email account to use but that might make it harder for Microsoft to contact you if they want to verify these accounts!!

Now my main concern is Windows 7 right now and Security. You know the Conflicker/Conflickr/Downadup Worm is currently loose on the internet. It uses the the Ms 08-067 Exploit and currently Windows 7 does not protect against this Worm in fact Microsoft has released information that you would need to install the updates manually to fix this problem.

Some vendors are yet to develop for Windows 7 beta due to it being a beta. Some others like Security Vendors are offering protection for Windows 7 Beta. This is mainly the Anti-virus software group, I would like to see more people embrace windows 7 as much as the security groups. Although this is the first step it would need to be more open response from Manufacturers and dealers alike they would need to get it to work making sure their drivers and such will work good with Windows 7. This is where it takes time, that is why I am glad it is a beta, it allows vendors and Companies a like a chance to test out their software and Hardware and even their drivers before the release.

Before I support this, I would like to see more happen to Windows 7 in some areas. For instance I’d like to see more compatability and more drivers and software that works for Windows 7. I’d also like to see Microsoft to take Windows 7 Beta Serious and Keep the Security up on it and not let it lapse. I’d want Microsoft to send out patches for Vulnerabilities just like Vista and keep people’s system updated so you don’t have to update them manually. I just hope Microsoft takes Apple’s example to heart and release Windows 7 without having to have several versions of the same Operating System.

Google SearchWiki dies after two days!!

PaulNovember 22, 2008

According to Techcrunch Google Pulls the Google SearchWiki. Unsure as to way but here’s what they said:

Users are reporting that the recent changes to Google’s search engine, called SearchWiki, have simply disappeared from the site. It’s certainly gone from my account.

[ad#ad2-right]User reactions were mixed but weighted heavily towards “this is lame,” and there was no way to turn off the features other than to conduct Google searches without being logged in. Another way to turn it off was to switch search engines.

[via TechCrunch]

I’ve got my theory on this, and it’s quite a good theory. I think it was a making search results come up wrong or not at all. The last two days they’ve had that going my page views have drop BIG time. According to my Stats I’ve had 236 Unique Visits for Thursday, and 232 Wednesday. My Friday stats show that I only got 185 Unique Visits, dropping 40 to 50 people. My stats for today which is incomplete shows that I’ve only gotten 136 unique visits. Although that is complete you can see where I dropped drastically. I think Google was getting yelled at by websites due to the stats dropping. I am guessing people could tell if they wanted to go to a site just by reading the comments. This will hurt every site, including TechCrunch. I will say this is only a theory and this might or might not be the case.

This however is the best possible explanation that I could come up with. Do you know why they did that? I don’t know?

Google Creates the ultimate Search Wiki!!

PaulNovember 21, 2008

Google has started to do let people rate the searches and help find the better articles. Google is calling it Searchwiki. Here is a screen shot:

[ad#ad2-left]You can now help judge and rate search results. You can also X out the ones that are not right. I am going to play around with this even more. It started out on Google Trends and Now people are all wanting to know more about this. This could help my site even more. I want to know what others are thinking about this? Is this Good or can this be good for the spammers? You decide.

Some other Websites talking about this are:

TechCrunch

Wall Street Journal

ZDNet

These are just a few but I wanted to let you see what other websites are talking about this new feature. I do want to hear what you think about all this and what is likely to come later on?